If you’re familiar with relational databases, designing your app to use a fully-managed NoSQL database service like Amazon DynamoDB may be new to you. In this webinar, we’ll walk you through common NoSQL design patterns for a variety of applications to help you learn how to design a schema, store, and retrieve data with DynamoDB. We will discuss best practices with DynamoDB to develop IoT, AdTech, and gaming apps.

1. © 2015, Amazon Web Services, Inc. or its Affiliates. All rights reserved.
Rick Houlihan, Principal Solutions Architect
1/20/2016
DynamoDB
Design Patterns and Best Practices

2. What to expect from the session
• Brief history of data processing
• DynamoDB Internals
• Tables, API, data types, indexes
• Scaling and data modeling
• Design patterns and best practices
• Event driven applications and DDB Streams

3. Timeline of Database Technology

4. Data Volume Since 2010
• 90% of stored data generated in
last 2 years
• 1 Terabyte of data in 2010 equals
6.5 Petabytes today
• Linear correlation between data
pressure and technical innovation
• No reason these trends will not
continue over time

5. Technology Adoption and the Hype Curve

6. Why NoSQL?
Optimized for storage Optimized for compute
Normalized/relational Denormalized/hierarchical
Ad hoc queries Instantiated views
Scale vertically Scale horizontally
Good for OLAP Built for OLTP at scale
SQL NoSQL

7. SQL vs. NoSQL Access Pattern

8. Table
Table
Items
Attributes
Partition
Key
Sort
Key
Mandatory
Key-value access pattern
Determines data distribution Optional
Model 1:N relationships
Enables rich query capabilities
All items for key
==, <, >, >=, <=
“begins with”
“between”
“contains”
“in”
sorted results
counts
top/bottom N values

9. 00 55 A954 FFAA00 FF
Partition Keys
Partition Key uniquely identifies an item
Partition Key is used for building an unordered hash index
Allows table to be partitioned for scale
Id = 1
Name = Jim
Hash (1) = 7B
Id = 2
Name = Andy
Dept = Eng
Hash (2) = 48
Id = 3
Name = Kim
Dept = Ops
Hash (3) = CD
Key Space

10. Partition:Sort Key
Partition:Sort Key uses two attributes together to uniquely identify an Item
Within unordered hash index, data is arranged by the sort key
No limit on the number of items (∞) per partition key
• Except if you have local secondary indexes
00:0 FF:∞
Hash (2) = 48
Customer# = 2
Order# = 10
Item = Pen
Customer# = 2
Order# = 11
Item = Shoes
Customer# = 1
Order# = 10
Item = Toy
Customer# = 1
Order# = 11
Item = Boots
Hash (1) = 7B
Customer# = 3
Order# = 10
Item = Book
Customer# = 3
Order# = 11
Item = Paper
Hash (3) = CD
55 A9:∞54:∞ AA
Partition 1 Partition 2 Partition 3

11. Partitions are three-way replicated
Id = 2
Name = Andy
Dept = Engg
Id = 3
Name = Kim
Dept = Ops
Id = 1
Name = Jim
Id = 2
Name = Andy
Dept = Engg
Id = 3
Name = Kim
Dept = Ops
Id = 1
Name = Jim
Id = 2
Name = Andy
Dept = Engg
Id = 3
Name = Kim
Dept = Ops
Id = 1
Name = Jim
Replica 1
Replica 2
Replica 3
Partition 1 Partition 2 Partition N

12. Indexes

13. Local secondary index (LSI)
Alternate sort key attribute
Index is local to a partition key
A1
(partition)
A3
(sort)
A2
(item key)
A1
(partition)
A2
(sort)
A3 A4 A5
LSIs A1
(partition)
A4
(sort)
A2
(item key)
A3
(projected)
Table
KEYS_ONLY
INCLUDE A3
A1
(partition)
A5
(sort)
A2
(item key)
A3
(projected)
A4
(projected)
ALL
10 GB max per partition
key, i.e. LSIs limit the # of
range keys!

14. Global secondary index (GSI)
Alternate partition and/or sort key
Index is across all partition keys
A1
(partition)
A2 A3 A4 A5
GSIs A5
(partition)
A4
(sort)
A1
(item key)
A3
(projected)
Table
INCLUDE A3
A4
(partition)
A5
(sort)
A1
(item key)
A2
(projected)
A3
(projected) ALL
A2
(partition)
A1
(itemkey) KEYS_ONLY
RCUs/WCUs
provisioned separately
for GSIs
Online indexing

15. How do GSI updates work?
Table
Primary
table
Primary
table
Primary
table
Primary
table
Global
Secondary
Index
Client
2. Asynchronous
update (in progress)
If GSIs don’t have enough write capacity, table writes will be throttled!

16. LSI or GSI?
LSI can be modeled as a GSI
If data size in an item collection > 10 GB, use GSI
If eventual consistency is okay for your scenario, use
GSI!

17. Scaling

18. Scaling
Throughput
• Provision any amount of throughput to a table
Size
• Add any number of items to a table
• Max item size is 400 KB
• LSIs limit the number of range keys due to 10 GB limit
Scaling is achieved through partitioning

19. Throughput
Provisioned at the table level
• Write capacity units (WCUs) are measured in 1 KB per second
• Read capacity units (RCUs) are measured in 4 KB per second
• RCUs measure strictly consistent reads
• Eventually consistent reads cost 1/2 of consistent reads
Read and write throughput limits are independent
WCURCU

20. Partitioning math
In the future, these details might change…
Number of Partitions
By Capacity (Total RCU / 3000) + (Total WCU / 1000)
By Size Total Size / 10 GB
Total Partitions CEILING(MAX (Capacity, Size))

21. Partitioning example Table size = 8 GB, RCUs = 5000, WCUs = 500
RCUs per partition = 5000/3 = 1666.67
WCUs per partition = 500/3 = 166.67
Data/partition = 10/3 = 3.33 GB
RCUs and WCUs are uniformly
spread across partitions
Number of Partitions
By Capacity (5000 / 3000) + (500 / 1000) = 2.17
By Size 8 / 10 = 0.8
Total Partitions CEILING(MAX (2.17, 0.8)) = 3

22. What causes throttling?
If sustained throughput goes beyond provisioned throughput per partition
Non-uniform workloads
• Hot keys/hot partitions
• Very large bursts
Mixing hot data with cold data
• Use a table per time period
From the example before:
• Table created with 5000 RCUs, 500 WCUs
• RCUs per partition = 1666.67
• WCUs per partition = 166.67
• If sustained throughput > (1666 RCUs or 166 WCUs) per key or partition,
DynamoDB may throttle requests
• Solution: Increase provisioned throughput

23. What bad NoSQL looks like…
Partition
Time
Heat

24. Getting the most out of DynamoDB throughput
“To get the most out of DynamoDB
throughput, create tables where
the hash key element has a large
number of distinct values, and
values are requested fairly
uniformly, as randomly as
possible.”
—DynamoDB Developer Guide
Space: access is evenly
spread over the key-space
Time: requests arrive evenly
spaced in time

25. Much better picture…

26. Data modeling

27. 1:1 relationships or key-values
Use a table or GSI with an alternate partition key
Use GetItem or BatchGetItem API
Example: Given an SSN or license number, get attributes
Users Table
Partiton key Attributes
SSN = 123-45-6789 Email = johndoe@nowhere.com, License = TDL25478134
SSN = 987-65-4321 Email = maryfowler@somewhere.com, License = TDL78309234
Users-Email-GSI
Partition key Attributes
License = TDL78309234 Email = maryfowler@somewhere.com, SSN = 987-65-4321
License = TDL25478134 Email = johndoe@nowhere.com, SSN = 123-45-6789

28. 1:N relationships or parent-children
Use a table or GSI with partition and sort key
Use Query API
Example:
• Given a device, find all readings between epoch X, Y
Device-measurements
Partition Key Sort key Attributes
DeviceId = 1 epoch = 5513A97C Temperature = 30, pressure = 90
DeviceId = 1 epoch = 5513A9DB Temperature = 30, pressure = 90

29. N:M relationships
Use a table and GSI with partition and sort key elements
switched
Use Query API
Example: Given a user, find all games. Or given a game,
find all users.
User-Games-Table
Partition Key Sort key
UserId = bob GameId = Game1
UserId = fred GameId = Game2
UserId = bob GameId = Game3
Game-Users-GSI
Partition Key Sort key
GameId = Game1 UserId = bob
GameId = Game2 UserId = fred
GameId = Game3 UserId = bob

30. Hierarchical Data
Tiered relational data structures

31. Hierarchical Data Structures as Items…
Use composite sort key to define a Hierarchy
Highly selective result sets with sort queries
Index anything, scales to any size
Primary Key
Attributes
ProductID type
Items
1 bookID
title author genre publisher datePublished ISBN
Ringworld Larry Niven Science Fiction Ballantine Oct-70 0-345-02046-4
2 albumID
title artist genre label studio relesed producer
Dark Side of the Moon Pink Floyd Progressive Rock Harvest Abbey Road 3/1/73 Pink Floyd
2 albumID:trackID
title length music vocals
Speak to Me 1:30 Mason Instrumental
2 albumID:trackID
title length music vocals
Breathe 2:43 Waters, Gilmour, Wright Gilmour
2 albumID:trackID
title length music vocals
On the Run 3:30 Gilmour, Waters Instrumental
3 movieID
title genre writer producer
Idiocracy Scifi Comedy Mike Judge 20th Century Fox
3 movieID:actorID
name character image
Luke Wilson Joe Bowers img2.jpg
3 movieID:actorID
name character image
Maya Rudolph Rita img3.jpg
3 movieID:actorID
name character image
Dax Shepard Frito Pendejo img1.jpg

32. … or as Documents (JSON)
JSON data types (M, L, BOOL, NULL)
Document SDKs Available
Indexing only via Streams/Lambda
400KB max item size (limits hierarchical data structure)
Primary Key
Attributes
ProductID
Items
1
id title author genre publisher datePublished ISBN
bookID Ringworld Larry Niven Science Fiction Ballantine Oct-70 0-345-02046-4
2
id title artist genre Attributes
albumID
Dark Side of the
Moon
Pink Floyd Progressive Rock
{ label:"Harvest", studio: "Abbey Road", published: "3/1/73", producer: "Pink
Floyd", tracks: [{title: "Speak to Me", length: "1:30", music: "Mason", vocals:
"Instrumental"},{title: ”Breathe", length: ”2:43", music: ”Waters, Gilmour,
Wright", vocals: ”Gilmour"},{title: ”On the Run", length: “3:30", music: ”Gilmour,
Waters", vocals: "Instrumental"}]}
3
id title genre writer Attributes
movieID Idiocracy Scifi Comedy Mike Judge
{ producer: "20th Century Fox", actors: [{ name: "Luke Wilson", dob: "9/21/71",
character: "Joe Bowers", image: "img2.jpg"},{ name: "Maya Rudolph", dob:
"7/27/72", character: "Rita", image: "img1.jpg"},{ name: "Dax Shepard", dob:
"1/2/75", character: "Frito Pendejo", image: "img3.jpg"}]

33. Scenarios and best practices

34. Event logging
Storing time series data

35. Time series tables
Events_table_2015_April
Event_id
(Partition)
Timestamp
(Sort)
Attribute1 …. Attribute N
Events_table_2015_March
Event_id
(Partition)
Timestamp
(Sort)
Attribute1 …. Attribute N
Events_table_2015_Feburary
Event_id
(Partition)
Timestamp
(Sort)
Attribute1 …. Attribute N
Events_table_2015_January
Event_id
(Partition)
Timestamp
(Sort)
Attribute1 …. Attribute N
RCUs = 1000
WCUs = 1
RCUs = 10000
WCUs = 10000
RCUs = 100
WCUs = 1
RCUs = 10
WCUs = 1
Current table
Older tables
HotdataColddata
Don’t mix hot and cold data; archive cold data to Amazon S3

36. Dealing with time series data
Use a table per time period
Pre-create daily, weekly, monthly tables
Provision required throughput for current table
Writes go to the current table
Turn off (or reduce) throughput for older tables

37. Product catalog
Popular items (read)

38. Partition 1
2000 RCUs
Partition K
2000 RCUs
Partition M
2000 RCUs
Partition 50
2000 RCU
Scaling bottlenecks
Product A Product B
Shoppers
ProductCatalog Table
SELECT Id, Description, ...
FROM ProductCatalog
WHERE Id="POPULAR_PRODUCT"

40. Partition 1 Partition 2
ProductCatalog Table
User
DynamoDB
User
Cache
popular items
SELECT Id, Description, ...
FROM ProductCatalog
WHERE Id="POPULAR_PRODUCT"

42. Messaging app
Large items
Filters vs. indexes
M:N Modeling—inbox and outbox

43. Messages
Table
Messages App
David
SELECT *
FROM Messages
WHERE Recipient='David'
LIMIT 50
ORDER BY Date DESC
Inbox
SELECT *
FROM Messages
WHERE Sender ='David'
LIMIT 50
ORDER BY Date DESC
Outbox

44. Recipient Date Sender Message
David 2014-10-02 Bob …
… 48 more messages for David …
David 2014-10-03 Alice …
Alice 2014-09-28 Bob …
Alice 2014-10-01 Carol …
Large and small attributes mixed
(Many more messages)
David
Messages Table
50 items × 256 KB each
Partition key Sort key
Large message bodies
Attachments
SELECT *
FROM Messages
WHERE Recipient='David'
LIMIT 50
ORDER BY Date DESC
Inbox

45. Computing inbox query cost
Items evaluated by query
Average item size
Conversion ratio
Eventually consistent reads
50 * 256KB * (1 RCU / 4KB) * (1 / 2) = 1600 RCU

46. Recipient Date Sender Subject MsgId
David 2014-10-02 Bob Hi!… afed
David 2014-10-03 Alice RE: The… 3kf8
Alice 2014-09-28 Bob FW: Ok… 9d2b
Alice 2014-10-01 Carol Hi!... ct7r
Separate the bulk data
Inbox-GSI Messages Table
MsgId Body
9d2b …
3kf8 …
ct7r …
afed …
David
1. Query Inbox-GSI: 1 RCU
2. BatchGetItem Messages: 1600 RCU
(50 separate items at 256 KB)
(50 sequential items at 128 bytes)
Uniformly distributes large item reads

47. Inbox GSI
Define which attributes to copy into the index

48. Outbox Sender
Outbox GSI
SELECT *
FROM Messages
WHERE Sender ='David'
LIMIT 50
ORDER BY Date DESC

49. Messaging app
Messages
Table
David
Inbox
Global secondary
index
Inbox
Outbox
Global secondary
index
Outbox

50. Reduce one-to-many item sizes
Configure secondary index projections
Use GSIs to model M:N relationship
between sender and recipient
Distribute large items
Querying many large items at once
InboxMessagesOutbox

51. Multiplayer online gaming
Query filters vs.
composite key indexes

52. GameId Date Host Opponent Status
d9bl3 2014-10-02 David Alice DONE
72f49 2014-09-30 Alice Bob PENDING
o2pnb 2014-10-08 Bob Carol IN_PROGRESS
b932s 2014-10-03 Carol Bob PENDING
ef9ca 2014-10-03 David Bob IN_PROGRESS
Games Table
Hierarchical Data Structures
Partition key

53. Query for incoming game requests
DynamoDB indexes provide partiton and sort
What about queries for two equalities and a sort?
SELECT * FROM Game
WHERE Opponent='Bob‘
AND Status=‘PENDING'
ORDER BY Date DESC
(hash)
(range)
(?)

54. Secondary Index
Opponent Date GameId Status Host
Alice 2014-10-02 d9bl3 DONE David
Carol 2014-10-08 o2pnb IN_PROGRESS Bob
Bob 2014-09-30 72f49 PENDING Alice
Bob 2014-10-03 b932s PENDING Carol
Bob 2014-10-03 ef9ca IN_PROGRESS David
Approach 1: Query filter
BobPartition key Sort key

55. Secondary Index
Approach 1: Query filter
Bob
Opponent Date GameId Status Host
Alice 2014-10-02 d9bl3 DONE David
Carol 2014-10-08 o2pnb IN_PROGRESS Bob
Bob 2014-09-30 72f49 PENDING Alice
Bob 2014-10-03 b932s PENDING Carol
Bob 2014-10-03 ef9ca IN_PROGRESS David
SELECT * FROM Game
WHERE Opponent='Bob'
ORDER BY Date DESC
FILTER ON Status='PENDING'
(filtered out)

56. Needle in a haystack
Bob

57. Send back less data “on the wire”
Simplify application code
Simple SQL-like expressions
• AND, OR, NOT, ()
Use query filter
Your index isn’t entirely selective

58. Approach 2: Composite key
StatusDate
DONE_2014-10-02
IN_PROGRESS_2014-10-08
IN_PROGRESS_2014-10-03
PENDING_2014-09-30
PENDING_2014-10-03
Status
DONE
IN_PROGRESS
IN_PROGRESS
PENDING
PENDING
Date
2014-10-02
2014-10-08
2014-10-03
2014-10-03
2014-09-30
+ =

59. Secondary Index
Approach 2: Composite key
Opponent StatusDate GameId Host
Alice DONE_2014-10-02 d9bl3 David
Carol IN_PROGRESS_2014-10-08 o2pnb Bob
Bob IN_PROGRESS_2014-10-03 ef9ca David
Bob PENDING_2014-09-30 72f49 Alice
Bob PENDING_2014-10-03 b932s Carol
Partition key Sort key

60. Opponent StatusDate GameId Host
Alice DONE_2014-10-02 d9bl3 David
Carol IN_PROGRESS_2014-10-08 o2pnb Bob
Bob IN_PROGRESS_2014-10-03 ef9ca David
Bob PENDING_2014-09-30 72f49 Alice
Bob PENDING_2014-10-03 b932s Carol
Secondary Index
Approach 2: Composite key
Bob
SELECT * FROM Game
WHERE Opponent='Bob'
AND StatusDate BEGINS_WITH 'PENDING'

61. Needle in a sorted haystack
Bob

62. Sparse indexes
Id
(Partition)
User Game Score Date Award
1 Bob G1 1300 2012-12-23
2 Bob G1 1450 2012-12-23
3 Jay G1 1600 2012-12-24
4 Mary G1 2000 2012-10-24 Champ
5 Ryan G2 123 2012-03-10
6 Jones G2 345 2012-03-20
Game-scores-table
Award
(Partition)
Id User Score
Champ 4 Mary 2000
Award-GSI
Scan sparse GSIs

63. Real-Time voting
Write-heavy items

64. Partition 1
1000 WCUs
Partition K
1000 WCUs
Partition M
1000 WCUs
Partition N
1000 WCUs
Votes Table
Candidate A Candidate B
Scaling bottlenecks
Voters
Provision 200,000 WCUs

65. Write sharding
Candidate A_2
Candidate B_1
Candidate B_2
Candidate B_3
Candidate B_5
Candidate B_4
Candidate B_7
Candidate B_6
Candidate A_1
Candidate A_3
Candidate A_4
Candidate A_7 Candidate B_8
Candidate A_6 Candidate A_8
Candidate A_5
Voter
Votes Table

66. Write sharding
Candidate A_2
Candidate B_1
Candidate B_2
Candidate B_3
Candidate B_5
Candidate B_4
Candidate B_7
Candidate B_6
Candidate A_1
Candidate A_3
Candidate A_4
Candidate A_7 Candidate B_8
UpdateItem: “CandidateA_” + rand(0, 10)
ADD 1 to Votes
Candidate A_6 Candidate A_8
Candidate A_5
Voter
Votes Table

67. Votes Table
Shard aggregation
Candidate A_2
Candidate B_1
Candidate B_2
Candidate B_3
Candidate B_5
Candidate B_4
Candidate B_7
Candidate B_6
Candidate A_1
Candidate A_3
Candidate A_4
Candidate A_5
Candidate A_6 Candidate A_8
Candidate A_7 Candidate B_8
Periodic
Process
Candidate A
Total: 2.5M
1. Sum
2. Store Voter

68. Trade off read cost for write scalability
Consider throughput per partition key
Shard write-heavy partition keys
Your write workload is not horizontally
scalable

69. Concatenate attributes to form useful
secondary index keys
Take advantage of sparse indexes
Replace filter with indexes
You want to optimize a query as much
as possible
Status + Date

70. DynamoDB Streams

71. Stream of updates to a table
Asynchronous
Exactly once
Strictly ordered
• Per item
Highly durable
• Scale with table
24-hour lifetime
Sub-second latency
DynamoDB Streams

72. View Type Destination
Old image—before update Name = John, Destination = Mars
New image—after update Name = John, Destination = Pluto
Old and new images Name = John, Destination = Mars
Name = John, Destination = Pluto
Keys only Name = John
View types
UpdateItem (Name = John, Destination = Pluto)

73. Stream
Table
Partition 1
Partition 2
Partition 3
Partition 4
Partition 5
Table
Shard 1
Shard 2
Shard 3
Shard 4
KCL
Worker
KCL
Worker
KCL
Worker
KCL
Worker
Amazon Kinesis Client
Library Application
DynamoDB
Client Application
Updates
DynamoDB Streams and
Amazon Kinesis Client Library

74. DynamoDB Streams
Open Source Cross-
Region Replication Library
Asia Pacific (Sydney) EU (Ireland) Replica
US East (N. Virginia)
Cross-region replication

75. DynamoDB Streams and AWS Lambda

76. Triggers
Lambda function
Notify change
Derivative Tables
CloudSearch
ElastiCache

77. Analytics with
DynamoDB Streams
Collect and de-dupe data in DynamoDB
Aggregate data in-memory and flush periodically
Performing real-time aggregation and
analytics

78. Architecture

79. Reference Architecture

80. Elastic Event Driven Applications

81. Thank you!